Ambitious politicians pledge that if power is thrust upon them they will steer clear of spin and pursue consensus in forging policies that will improve our lives.
But when a Prime Minister or a President loses a mania for communication and appears to lack a defining vision, then voters rightly wonder if he or she is firing on all cylinders.
This irony will not be lost on President Obama as he seeks to regain the initiative in the debate on the future of healthcare.
His leadership on this issue has managed to re-excite the fringes of the American Right who just months earlier were in despair at the end of the Bush era. He has simultaneously dismayed legions of his supporters who believed he would end of the great scandals of the superpower.
Democrats and Republicans should be falling over each other in the race to ensure the United States has the best healthcare system in the world.
Surely any politician – from either the Left or the Right – desperate for a prominent place in history textbooks, would fight to reform a system under which 45m Americans lack insurance and 25m do not have full coverage?
Half a century after Britain sought to sever the link between poverty and ill-health by instituting the NHS, millions of US citizens fear that unemployment plus sickness will equal bankruptcy.
The message this sends out to the rest of the world is that embracing democracy and capitalism do not automatically been that basic issues of social justice will be addressed. In fact, members of democratic institutions are seen to be working to thwart efforts to provide a Government-run insurance scheme.
If an enthusiastically elected president with a whopping majority in both Houses of Congress cannot impose his will, what can he do?
In seeking to build consensus, Obama – a campaigner extraordinaire – has stepped out of the limelight and let congressional politicians thrash out legislation. This is like letting a herd of bobcats loose in your kitchen and being surprised when you return an hour later and find they have not prepared a cordon bleu dinner.
In Britain, the frustration with politicians is not about an excess of soundbites but the lack of communication. Where is the detailed vision for how hurricane-wrecked public finances can be restored?
A surgeon who refused to tell patients where he would make an incision would be quickly sacked. Such ambiguity about where fiscal cuts will fall is equally maddening.
If a person wants to be at the heart of government but has no appetite for passionate and public argument they should join the civil service.
Anyone who does not have the imagination and brains to come up with policies to protect the vulnerable – and who lacks the conviction and compulsion to fight from the front – should not be in politics
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